© Pierre Grosbois LYON - Les Subsistances (FR) /February 2011 PARIS – Théâtre de la Bastille (FR) /March 2011 NEW-YORK Festival Walls and Bridges (US) /October 2011 Coming soon … TOULOUSE – Théâtre National de Toulouse (FR) /December 2011 NANTES– Le Lieu Unique (FR) /January 2012 VALENCE– La Comédie de Valence (FR) / January 2012 Angoulême – Théâtre d’Angoulême BRUXELLES - Théâtre 140 (BE) /January 2012 Scène Nationale (FR) /February 2012 ALENÇON (FR) December 2, 2013 MONTBELIARD L’Allan (FR) /March 2012 MONTREUIL - Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil (FR) /March2012 Montpellier – Rockstore / Théâtre des SALAMANQUE - Festival Facyl (ES) /June 2012 13 vents (FR) GENEVE - Festival La Bâtie (CH) /September 2012 December 5 and 6, 2013 VILLENEUVE D’ASCQ - La Rose des Vents (FR) /October 2012 ROUEN – Théâtre des 2 Rives (FR) /April 2013 MENDE – Adda Scènes Croisées (FR) /April 2013 BOURGES - Maison de la Culture (FR) /May 2013 2 Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil – centre dramatique national PLEASE KILL ME After Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain ’s novel adaptation, conception and stage direction Mathieu Bauer artistic collaboration and musical adaptation Sylvain Cartigny video Stéphane Lavoix lighting design Jean-Marc Skatchko sound Dominique Bataille with Matthias Girbig and Kate Strong drums Mathieu Bauer sampler, bass Lazare Boghossian bass guitar Sylvain Cartigny First production by Sentimental Bourreau, Les Subsistances (Lyon), with the support of Spedidam . Rerun production by Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil centre dramatique national. With the kind authorization of Riverside Literary Agency Duration: 1h25 VIDEO CLIP : HTTP://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=KFYD_VUOLE8 The show is available for touring in 2013/2014/2015 In French or English Tour contact Nathalie Remy [email protected] 00 33 (0)1 48 70 48 95 3 Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil – centre dramatique national « Rock’n’roll is so great that people should die for it. » This statement by Lou Reed, taken from Please Kill Me – Legs McNeil and Gilian McCain’s oral history – encapsulates what is at stake in this performance, which follows the tracks of Iggy Pop, Jim Morrison Richard Hell, Lou Reed, Tom Verlaine, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Sid Vicious, Stable Star and Billy Murcia. Rock ‘n’ Roll – an old history still very much alive today – is both the expression of a Dionysian impulse and of a teenager’s joyful rebellion. Fueled with anecdotes from McNeil and McCain’s book, which are at times amusing and at times frightening, the play delves into the punk movement through New York’s CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City Club. It turns rock and punk music inside out, revealing the life of the protagonists with surprising intimacy – an extravagant life filled with music, sex, humour and massive amounts of drugs – sometimes leading to overdoses – not to mention the © Pierre Gro sbois trials and tribulations that go with living in the margins. But what is most striking in these more or less famous heroes of Rock ‘n Roll – and indeed, at the time, many were far from famous –, is their freedom and creativity. Mathieu Bauer is in no way trying to recreate a punk concert, which would be an impossible venture. Instead, he brings to the stage what is most crucial to him, thrilled as he is by the tormented lives of the musicians, however known they may be. ROCK THEATRE A drummer by training, Mathieu Bauer became interested in theater by way of music. Both arts intertwine in his practice, as he doesn’t view life without one or the other. Being part of a generation fascinated with the dreams and excesses of the 1970s, he has of course read Please Kill Me , the oral history of the Gods of punk written by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. On stage are three musicians and a pair of actors/singers. Matthias Girbig plays a young man filled with naiveté and wonder, who moves from one memory to another, and sings in English. Kate Strong, a tensed, focused performer, keeps a sort of moved distance as she sings and tells the story in English. The voice carries the words without translating or betraying them. © Pierre Grosbois As is often the case in Mathieu Bauer’s pieces, the musical composition acts as a counterpoint to the book’s musical world, exploring contrasts and moving territories, with the music also supporting the narrative. 4 Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil – centre dramatique national ASSERTING A FORM OF URGENCY “Above all, what I like in these flamboyant characters in the punk scene is that they are asserting something. Even “No Future” is a form of assertion. It expresses the will to seize the moment, here and now. It is the assertion of a form of urgency.” With deadpan irony or cheeky humour, the protagonists of the punk movement revive the most surprising anecdotes in several moments in their lives. They are not in the least ashamed to expose what was, after all, an extreme lifestyle, not so much linked to the British punk movement as to a form of paradoxical innocence, which rejected the hackneyed “peace and love” ideals of the 60s and the “money rules” culture which could already be felt at the turn of the 80s. © Pierre Grosbois But there’s a price to pay for this way of living (ODs, stabbing, prostitution), in which derision is used as a weapon of mass destruction. How can all this energy, chaos and decibels be expressed? How can one convey what this movement produced in terms of bodies (Iggy Pop’s dancing), words (the invention of a language to write about a generation), codes (in terms of esthetics or fashion), morals (bisexuality, transsexuality…) or politics (a kind of nihilism entangled in the present)? These characters express the need to live differently, with a mix of courage and unconsciousness, to invent or create something, to push themselves to the limit. These elements give the stories an epic or, in turn, trivial dimension, which is eventually quite moving. I don’t want to reproduce or mimic anything, I want to express this vitality, this energy, this abandon on stage. I don’t want to cry over a golden age, but to convey our tenderness towards these characters - with some melancholy perhaps, but with no nostalgia whatsoever.” Mathieu Bauer PLEASE KILL ME The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Please Kill Me is the (poisonous) fruit of hundred of interviews with the people who contributed to one of the most tumultuous cultural and musical movements of the late 20 th century: the American punk rock scene. The book is a tightly woven, extremely lively montage, in turn ruthlessly funny and downright tragic, in which voices respond to each other but rarely come in unison. They offer an incredible journey through everyday lives filled with drugs and catastrophes, drugs and (sometimes) poetry – those of the Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop’s Stooges, MC5, the New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders’s Heartbreakers, Patti Smith, Television, the Ramones and Blondie. Legs McNeil was born and raised in Connecticut where, to this day, the sale of alcohol after 8 pm is banned. Consequently, as a teenager, he had to head to New York to quench his thirst. In 1975, aged 18, he founded the mythical fanzine Punk . In the 80s, he worked as Chief Editor of Spin magazine. Today, he lives alone in New York and drinks Pepsi. Gillian McCain run the “Poetry Project” at St. Mark’s Church in New York in the 1970s, a program which launched Patti Smith, among others. Today, she lives in New York. 5 Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil – centre dramatique national MATHIEU BAUER’S BIOGRAPHY Stage director - Musician Head of Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil Mathieu Bauer’s main concern is to create works whose topics resonate with the stakes of our times. Guided by the notion of a theater closely linked to music, cinema and literature, where montage is conceived as a way to put down barriers between artistic forms, Mathieu Bauer works from very diverse texts and materials: newspaper articles, essays, novels, films, operas, and of course theater plays. He composes new structures which combine rhythm, text, singing and image. Here lies the specificity of his work and the basic logic of his theatrical practice. Trained as a musician, he founded the Sentimental Bourreau company with other artists. This collective adventure resulted in several pieces which still contribute to the company’s fame, such as Les Carabiniers , based on scripts by Jean-Luc Godard, Rossellini and Jean Gruau (1989); La Grande Charge Hystérique after Invention de l’hystérie by G. Didi Huberman (1991); Va-t’en chercher le bonheur et ne reviens pas les mains vides after Nathanael West, Brecht and Gagarine (1995); Satan conduit le bal after Panizza, Pessoa and J.D. Vincent (1997) and Tout ce qui vit s’oppose à quelque chose after Kant, Lucretius and G. Didi Huberman (1998 -1999). Since 1999, Mathieu Bauer has been the sole stage director and head of the company, while still working with some of his past collaborators, and with new ones, such as the actress Kate Strong, video artist Stéphane Lavoix... These collaborations resulted in Les Chasses du comte Zaroff after Masse et Puissance by Elias Canetti; Drei Time Ajax after a poem by Heiner Müller (2003); L’Exercice a été profitable Monsieur after Serge Daney (2003); Rien ne va plus after Stefan Zweig and Georges Bataille (2005); Top Dogs by Urs Widmer (2006); Tendre jeudi after John Steinbeck (2007), Tristan et... a free adaptation based on Richard Wagner’s libretto with texts by Lancelot Hamelin (2009). In 2011, Mathieu Bauer first staged Please kill me at Subsistances in Lyon and at Théâtre de la Bastille in Paris.